Gates Memoir Omits Key Facts on Obama's Afghan War Strategy

[unhappycamper]

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Gates-Memoir-Omits-Key-Fac-by-TheRealNews-Networ-Afghan-War_Afghanistan-Pullout_Obama_Obama_and_Foreign_Affairs-140119-457.html

Gareth Porter: Gates account conceals the dishonest tactics employed to get Obama's agreement to the Afghan War escalation

Gates Memoir Omits Key Facts on Obama's Afghan War Strategy
OpEdNews Op Eds 1/19/2014 at 19:47:17
By TheRealNews Network

~snip~

PORTER: Well, you know, the way in which the Gates memoir story has been played by the commercial news media is that this is a question of the president's policy commitment to the war in Afghanistan being questioned by his secretary of defense. And, of course, the White House then comes back and defends itself, says the president is firmly committed to the cause in Afghanistan and, you know, supports the U.S. troops there.

What this coverage of the memoirs by Gates and his comments on Afghanistan is really omitting -- and in fact covering up, I would argue -- is a really important story about how Obama was very much opposed to sending nearly 40,000 troops, additional troops to Afghanistan in the first place and was really put under terrific pressure by the military leadership and the Pentagon to go along with the request from General McChrystal in 2009 for that nearly 40,000 troops. And then, when he went along with that, but with the major caveat, a major set of conditions placed on the additional troops, there was immediately an effort by the U.S. military, supported, again, by Gates at the Pentagon, as well as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to really interfere with or to roll back (I think is the best way to put it) the policy initiative that the president added to the Afghan War policy, which was that he wanted -- that is, Obama wanted -- a beginning of troop withdrawal and a handover of responsibility by the U.S. military to Afghan forces by mid 2011, only 18 months after the beginning of this troop surge in Afghanistan. So that's a huge story, which was simply forgotten about or just neglected by the news media.

And I put together that story in my piece for Inter Press Service last week, but it was based to a great extent on already published information. It was not secret information or anything like that. It was in part based on the book Obama's Wars by Bob Woodward, which used notes from the top-secret meetings at the White House between Obama and his top national security advisers in 2009 and 2010.

And in those meetings, what we learned is that Obama was extremely skeptical about the proposed escalation in Afghanistan and was actually arguing quite strenuously that the real U.S. interest in that part of the world was not in Afghanistan, the real security concern was Pakistan. And, in fact, Obama, joined by Vice President Joe Biden, was arguing that U.S. security interest in the stability of Pakistan might well be negatively affected by stepping up the war by introducing tens of thousands of more troops into Afghanistan. So they were really pushing back against the troop request in October 2009.

[TwilightGardener]

1. Foreign policy is the main reason why I don't support Hillary Clinton. What has she

been right about? Her advice to Obama has been terrible--and Gates loves her because she followed him like a groupie on every decision. Except Libya--that was all Power, Rice and Clinton. Even Gates could see that wouldn't be a good idea.